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Newsletter No. 6, September 1992

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Newsletter No. 6, September 1992 SOCIETY OF AVIAN PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION INFORMATION LETTER n° 6, November 1992 Secretary: Cecile Mourer-Chauvire Departement des Sciences de la Terre 27-43 Boul. du 11 Novembre 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, FRANCE In memoriam: Pierce BRODKORB William Pierce Brodkorb died on 18 July at Gainesville, Florida. He was born in Chicago on 29 September 1908. His father died when he was still very young, and he accomplished all his university studies without much family support He had always been fascinated by birds, since his childhood and, when be was 16 years old, he contacted Colin Campbell Sanborn who taught him how to prepare bird skins. Then he was introduced to Ornithology at the Field Museum where he was given summer employment as a staff technician. He completed his studies at the University of Michigan where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1936. He worked as Assistant Curator of Birds at the Museum of Zoology in Michigan until 1946. During this time, he published numerous papers on Recent birds, but he bad always been interested in fossil birds. After the war, in 1946, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, where he remained until his retirement in December 1989. From the 1950s, be began collecting fossil birds in the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene of Florida, and on the island of Bermuda. At the same time he began to build a huge collection of bird skeletons. When this collection was presented to the Florida Museum of Natural History, at the University of Florida, it included 12500 skeletons, from 129 families, that had been almost entirely prepared by Professor Brodkorb alone. He published a very large number of papers on fossil birds, but his most famous and most important work in Paleornithology is for sure his Catalogue of Fossil Birds. He had a strong personality, he hated people who think they are important, and called them "stuffed-shirts", and most of those who knew him remember him as "a wonderful person". He always did as much as he could to help students, and foreign research workers, and to give them as many facilities as possible to accomplish their researches on fossil birds. He helped them by allowing them to use his collections, fossil or Recent, his library, by loaning skeletons, sending xerocopies, discussing their problems with them, and giving them advice, regardless of the time he spent It was he who proposed the creation of a Society grouping the scientists interested in Fossil birds and Avian evolution, during the meeting of the "Table Ronde sur l'Evolution des Oiseaux d'apres le Temoignage des Fossiles", in Lyon-Villeurbanne, in Septembre 1985. This informal society was later called Society for Avian Paleontology and Evolution (S.A.P.E.) and it was only after the International Ornithological Congress, in Ottawa, in 1986, that it was decided to send a letter of information every year. The second meeting of the S.A.P.E. was organized in Los Angeles, by Kenneth Campbell, so that the dates coincided with his eightieth birthday. He did suspect something was afoot, but he was not quite sure and, after the symposium he was very proud of it" All that stuff was done for me" he said to his family. A detailed biographical account has been written by Kenneth Campbell. who was a student of his, in Papers in Avian Paleontology honoring Pierce Brodkorb (1992: XIII-XIX). SAPE Newsletter no. 6 1 of 27 As Storrs Olson wrote me after his death: "It marks the end of an era, and we shall truly never see the likes of Pierce Brodkorb again". Cecile Mourer-Chauvire THIRD SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY OF AVIAN PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION (S.A.P.E.) Frankfurt am Main, 22-26 June 1992 The third symposium of the SAPE was held in Frankfurt in June 1992. It was excellently organized by D.S. PETERS and his collaborators, and we thank them very much. It was very interesting, especially during the workshop on Mesozoic birds, where all the participants bad the possibility to examine and to discuss casts or original material of recently discovered Early Cretaceous birds. The following papers were presented, either orally, or by posters: ALCOVER I.A. - Fossil birds from the Canary Islands. ALVARENGA H. M. FERRAZ de - A giant Anhinga (Aves: Anhingidae) from the Miocene of Chile. BARYSHNIKOV G. & POTAPOVA O. - Pleistocene birds from the Acheulean site of Treugolnaya Cave in the northern Caucasus. BOCHENSKI Z. - Early Holocene bird remains from Nemrik (North Iraq). BOCHENSKI Z. Ir. & TOMEK T. - How many comparative skeletons do we need to identify a bird bone ? BOEV Z. - Upper Pliocene birds from Varshets (West Balkan Range. Bulgaria). BOLES W.E. - Preliminary analysis of the Passeriformes from Riversleigh. Northwest Queensland, Australia. CAMPBELL K. - New specimens of Argentavis magnificens. CHENEVAL I. - A fossil Procellariiform from the late Oligocene locality of Froidefontaine (Territoire de Belfort, Fraoce ). CHIAPPE L. M. - Phylogenetic relationships of the Cretaceous birds of Argentina. CHINSAMY A. - Osteohistology of the birds Struthio and Sagittarius. and the dinosaurs Massospondylus and Syntarsus. DAVIS P. G. - The taphonomy of birds. DZERZHINSKY F. Ya. - Evidence for common ancestry of Galliformes and Anseriformes. ELZANOWSKI A. - Mesozoic birds and avian phylogeny. ERICSON P. - Evolution and systematics of the Paleogene family Presbyornithidae. FEDUCCIA A. - The aerodynamic model for the evolution of feathers and feather misinterpretation. HAFFER I. - Species versus phyletic lineages. SAPE Newsletter no. 6 2 of 27 HAYWARD J. L. - Understanding Humpty Dumpty -the taphonomy of avian eggs. HERNANDEZ F. & MORALES A. - Iberian Holocene avifaunas: A critical review. HESSE A. - The waterbird-assemblages of the Nördlinger Ries (MN 6) and the Steinheimer Basin (MN 7) -a comparison. JAMES H. - A chronotaxon of the Cape Cormorant (Phalacrocorax capensis) from the Pliocene of South Africa. JANOSSY D. - Upper Miocene ornithofauna from Polgardi. W-Hoogary. KARKHU A. - An Oligocene Trogon from the North Caucasus. KESSLER E. - New fossil bird remains from Pleistocene of Betfia. Romania. KUROCHKIN EN. - Morphological differentiation of paleognathous and neognathous birds. MARTIN L.D. - The position of the Enantiornithes in avian evolution. MIKHAILOV K. - Systematic relations within "Suborder Ciconii" (sensu Sibley et al. 1988) in terms of eggshell microstructure. MLIKOVSKY J. - Late Pleistocene birds of Elaichoria. Greece. MLIKOVSKY J. - Nomenclatural and taxonomic status of fossil birds described by H. G. L. REICHENBACH in 1852. MLIKOVSKY J. - A catalogue of Tertiary fossil sites in Europe. MOURER-CHAUVIRE C. - The Messelornithidae (Aves: Gruiformes) from the Paleogene of France. NORlEGA J. I. - The avifauna from the "Mesopotamian" (Late Miocene) of Entre Rios Province. Argentina. OLSON S. L. - Redescription of Thiornis sociata NAVAS. a nearly complete Miocene grebe from Spain (Aves: Podicipedidae). PETERS D. S. - A fossil bird from Messel with peculiar osteological features. RASMUSSEN P. C. & OLSON S. L. - Evolution and diversity of Alcidae in the Tertiary of the Western Atlantic. TYRBERG T. - Paleobiogeography of Lagopus grouse in the West Palearctic. UNWIN D. M. - The fossil record of birds: Macroevolutionary patterns, events and their reliability. WEBER E. - Monophyly of the Galloanseres: the evidence from cranial morphology. XUE XIANGXU - A fossil bird from the Paleocene of China. SAPE Newsletter no. 6 3 of 27 ZHOU ZHONGHE - Discovery of new Cretaceous Birds in China. MISSING ARCHAEOPTERYX In 1956 the third specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica was discovered near Solnhofen, and in 1959 it was described by F. Heller and published in Erlanger Geologische Abhandlungen, vol. 31. Subsequently the specimen was exhibited in the Maxberg Museum near Solnhofen - and therefore referred to as the "Maxberg specimen. in the literature - until its owner, Mr. Eduard Opitsch, removed it from display and took it back to his home in Pappenheim, in 1972. After this be would not allow access to the specimen. Even our request for a temporary loan on the occasion of the International Archaeopteryx Conference in Eichstätt in 1984 was ignored by him. In February 1991 Mr. Opitsch, a bachelor, died at the age of 91. His heir, a nephew, however could not find the limestone slabs containing the Archaeopteryx specimen. There is no evidence that Mr. Opitsch has sold the specimen but there is a reasonable suspicion that it was stolen immediately after his death. Therefore the Department of Public Prosecution in Ansbach (Staatsanwaltschaft) has taken over the case bot has bad no success so far. If the specimen (counterparts on two slabs of Solnhofen lithographic limestone, about 49 x 34.5 cm and 36 x 39.5 cm, each 12 to 15 mm thick) was in fact stolen it could possibly appear on the (black) market to be sold. In this case this important specimen (One out of only six) will be in danger of being lost to science for ever. Therefore we want the scientific community, especially our fellow vertebrate paleontologists, to be on the lookout for this specimen. We urge anybody who should happen to learn of the whereabouts of this Archaeopteryx, the Maxberg specimen, to be extremely cautious and to inform immediately either the Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie und historische Geologie, Richard-Wagner-Str. 10, 8(XX) München 2, Gennany, Tel (089) 5203365 (Dr. P. Wellnhofer), Pax. (089) 5203 286, or the Staatsanwaltschaft Ansbach, Promenade 4, 8800 Ansbach, Germany, Tel (0981) 58255, Pax. (0981) 58265. SAPE Newsletter no. 6 4 of 27 Dr. Peter WELLNHOFER Hauptkonservator at the Bayerische Staatssammlung för Paläontolgie und historische Geologie Museum. News from the members ARGENTINA Luis M CHIAPPE recently moved to the American Museum of Natural History (New York), from where he has received a Frick Fellowship (Department of Vertebrate Paleontology ) for die next two years. This project is focused on die anatomy and systematics of Mesozoic birds.
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